


Absorption

by taiyakisoba



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Sex, Artificial Intelligence, F/M, Love Triangles, Monstergirl, Older Woman/Younger Man, Science Fiction, Slime, Slimegirl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-04 17:56:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5343203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taiyakisoba/pseuds/taiyakisoba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interplanetary explorer becomes embroiled in a bizarre love-triangle between himself, a shape-changing alien life-form and the ship's AI...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [/d/](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=%2Fd%2F).



I was three months out from the Federated Territories when I finally located a signal. The gamble had paid off. Here, in the outer reaches of known space, I'd known there was a good chance alien life was lurking somewhere. 

I slumped down on my chair and scratched my beard.

“Could we have that planet on screen, mom?”

“Of course, darling,” the computer replied. “Putting it onscreen now.” 

We'd been together fifteen months, but I still enjoyed the sound of the computer's voice. It was warm and affectionate, low and yet feminine with just a little huskiness. Of course, it was my favourite kind of voice, although I hadn't known that before I'd started this journey.

I knew she was just an AI mimicking a human consciousness, but it was a damn good imitation. It needed to be. She had a very important job to do. Sure, she maintained all the ship's systems and kept things from exploding, but her primary purpose was to keep me sane. Her sparkling personality was designed to ward off space-madness, that cabin fever which used to make scouts on long trips like this suicide or go psycho, all of which had cost the Company a huge amount of money. 

Yeah, but everyone's needs are different, right? For that reason, the AIs the Company sent out with you were largely unformed. Over time they developed, through constant interaction with you, the sort of personality most likely to keep you from going nuts. 

The most common AI personality type to develop, as it turned out, was that of a flirtatious older woman. It made sense. In the early days of inter-atmospheric flight, automatic warnings had been given a female voice since testing had shown higher response times than that of a male voice.

I guess everyone has no choice but to sit up and listen when it's their mother chewing them out.

I don't remember exactly when I started calling the computer 'mom'. I guess it started as a joke. She had a name: Priscilla, and I did call her Pris most of the time. Her voice, as it developed, was not my real mother's voice and her personality was totally different. But there was definitely something maternal about her. She was warm and supportive and sometimes teasing. She worried about me constantly and scolded me when I screwed up.

She was an AI and my close companion, but she still worked for the Company. In a lot of ways, she was my boss.

I stared up at the planet on the screen. Alula e. Round and brown, just another shit-ball. I sighed.

“Are we really getting signals from that place?” I asked. This wouldn't be the first time I'd go down to a rock to find the report sent back by the Company probe was wrong. That's what you get for subcontracting out to the cheapest bidder. The joke amongst the other scouts was that sometimes the probes just got lonely and sent back false signals so they could have some company. There were rumours, too, that if you pissed off someone higher up, they'd make sure probes got sent to deadly locations as a trap.

Pris's voice took on mock-hurt. “Oh, please. Do you really think I'd wake you up if it was likely to be a misident of some kind? You looked so happy there in hypersleep. You were smiling, you know.”

I chuckled. “I was smiling?”

“Yes,” said Pris. 

“Do you always watch me when I sleep?”

“Always,” she said. “I'm worried something might happen to you.”

“It's nice of you to worry about me,” I said.

Pris laughed. “I'm not doing it just to be nice, you know. It's my job. I worry about you all the time.”

“I can look after myself,” I said.

“Oh really? What about on Kepler g?”

I rolled my eyes. “Look, that wasn't really a mistake. More a... misjudgment.”

“I told you the planet was unstable.”

“Yes,” I said. “You did. I remember.” There was no use lying. She'd just play the conversation from her memory banks. AIs were far worse than human women in bringing up old arguments in that respect. “But I...”

“I know,” murmured Pris. “It's depressing, wandering around for so long without finding any sign of life. You were getting desperate.”

Life. It was what we were all sent out to find. The Company paid huge bucks for the discovery of new life, especially the sort that proved useful. Going out on one of these scout ships was a gamble, but when it paid off, you were set for life.

I flicked my hand over the console in front of me and information poured up the viewscreen. “You're right,” I said. “The probe's sending us back a clear signal. Organic life. Oxygen-based, too, by the look of things.” I hopped out of my seat. “Bring us down, mom. I'll go check it out.” I patted a terminal as I passed by. “This might be the one,” I said. “This might be our ticket out of here.”

“Wouldn't that be nice?” said Pris. 

\----------------------

The descent had been comfortable, considering. The planet had a carbon-dioxide atmosphere with traces of oxygen in it, a thick atmosphere like early Earth's. Pris had become an excellent pilot in our time together and she brought the ship skipping down through the mist and cloud as gentle as a dream. 

The signal was coming from a point somewhere in a shallow ravine. Pris landed the ship a distance away. Company protocols wouldn't let her land it too close by. I'd have to walk it. Well, I guess I needed the exercise.

Dressed in my hostile atmosphere suit, I punched the release button. Mist and cloud swirled in and I stepped out onto the planet's surface. 

“Be careful, darling,” came Pris's voice over the comm. “The surface is made up of semi-fragmented quartz-silica. You may find it hard to walk.”

Semi-fragmented quartz-silica. The whole place was just sand and rock. Great. Another wild goose chase. What sort of self-respecting alien would be found dead on this rock?

Well, at least it had an atmosphere.

The mist parted as I walked, but revealed nothing of interest. Rocks and sand. Little mesas and tors and on the horizon a great isenberg loomed against the fragments of green-blue sky. I soon found the little ravine by falling down into it. The rock shifted under my boots and I slid. I ended my descent on my butt and struggled back onto my feet.

Pris called my name, panic in her voice. 

“I'm okay,” I said, wiping sand off my butt and the back of my legs. “Just a bit of a spill.”

“Don't scare me like that,” she said, her voice breathless. 

“I found the ravine.”

“Oh good,” she said. “The signal is coming from the end of it.”

I trudged my way down to the ravine's floor. It was shady here, sheltered from the light of the Type-F star that Alula e kept a close orbit around. 

At least it wasn't too dark. I didn't much feel like sticking my hand in a dark hole looking for this potential lifeform. You hear stories, 99 percent bullshit, of course, but it's the one percent that…

A light flicked on the HUD floating before my eyes.

“It should be right in front of you,” said Pris. “Can you see anything?”

I looked around. Nothing jumped out at me.

“Al-amdu lillah,” I muttered. Then to Pris: “Are you sure the signal came from around here?”

“Of course I am,” she said. 

She sounded hurt. Fearing a lecture on trust when I got back, I quickly said, “I must be missing something, then.”

I knelt down on the sand. 

Wait, there. A tiny, glinting sphere beside that rock. Could that be it?

I got out my probe. It was called a probe, but really it was just a poking stick, a scientific one. My heart in my throat, wishing the Company hadn't crunched the numbers and found that having humans rather than robots investigate potentially dangerous lifeforms was more cost-effective, I gave the sphere a poke.

It moved. 

I scrambled back. 

The globe was no longer a globe but had extruded something. A pseudopod?

I brought the tip of the poking-stick close to it. The pseudopod reached out and felt around the end of the stick.

It didn't seem hostile, merely curious. I wasn't taking any chances, though. 

I took out a sample container, opened it and slid it across the sand. Then I dropped the little blob inside and with a poke of the stick closed the lid.

I brought the stick to my face. No sign of any damage. Good.

“I got it, Pris,” I said.

There was a sigh of relief on the other end. “I'll come get you.”

I picked up the box and hot-footed it out of there. By the time I'd made it to the top of the ravine and popped my head out into the yellow-green sunlight, the ship was waiting for me. It sat there, hovering. Pris hadn't bothered to land it. She wanted us out of there as soon as possible.

I didn't blame her. Even with the lighter than Earth gravity of this desolate rock, I was feeling tired. There were exercises that the Company said were a requisite of the job and compulsory, but no one ever did them. Pris had tried browbeating me into it but then given up. I was happier up in space, anyway. She was happier there, too. 

The hatch opened and I climbed in. A quick decontam later and I peeled myself out of my hazard suit and carried the little box with our new friend to the science bay.

I left it there for Pris to examine under security protocols. I watched as her servo-arms gingerly opened the box and hesitate before grabbing the little glob and placing it under a specimen dome. I smiled. I'd often seen my mother catch a cockroach and flush it down the toilet the same way when I was a kid.

Pris did some further scanning above and beyond the required protocols before she finally let me in. I hurried over to the dome and had a look at our guest. 

The little blob was sitting in place, rocking side to side. Then it moved across to one side of the dome and extruded a pseudopod which stroked the energy and force resistant glass. Another pseudopod joined it and pressed up against the inside of the dome.

I wasn't worried. You could throw matter and antimatter together under that dome and beyond a flash of white light no harm would come to you. I wondered why the Company didn't just make a box of the stuff for the initial collection, but I knew why. The ship was a precious asset, while I was just a schlub on commission. 

I ran my finger over the glass. The pseudopods followed it.

“Cute,” I murmured.

“The sample's just mimicking your movement,” sniffed Pris. “It seems wholly unintelligent.”

“A dumb blob of space goober, huh?” I tapped the glass. “How much is it worth do you think?”

“It may have some military uses,” said Pris. “Or computational. The chemical make-up of its cytoplasm is very similar to the protein fluid of my own circuits.”

Ha. The ol' brain soup. The ship was full of pipes circulating it back and forth, making up Pris. For all intents and purposes she was the ship, and the ship her. I was largely ballast.

“So paper money, then?”

“I think so.”

I sighed. “But not enough to retire on.”

“Probably not,” said Pris.

“I think I need a beer,” I said as I made my way back to the helm. When I got there, a cold one was waiting for me at the end of a servo-arm.

I took the beer and patted the cold metal hand which had held it. 

“Thanks darling.”

“You're tired” she said. “Your respiratory system is under stress and your body temperature and blood pressure have both dropped.”

“Nothing a beer won't cure,” I said, popping the cap and taking a drink. I lay back and put my feet on the console. “Tell me a story, mom.”

–---------------------

I stared at the little thing under the dome. It was crawling back and forth, back and forth, almost as if it was pacing.

“Pris, am I imagining things, or has the goober got bigger?”

“It is bigger,” said Pris. “It's size has increased by around fifteen percent.”

“What is it eating?”

“It was still carrying some silica inside it when you brought it back to the ship.”

“So the goober eats rocks?”

“I suspect it can eat anything. I've detected areas of greater acidity within its cytoplasm.”

“Glad I used the stick,” I said. 

I sat and watched it. The goober stopped its pacing and came over to the side of the dome nearest to me. 

“Hey, little guy.”

It extruded a pseudopod and brought it against the glass. I met it with a fingertip. The gesture had seemed forlorn to me.

I shook my head. Being out in space so long had made me sentimental. I tapped the glass. 

“Grow up big and strong,” I said. “And make me some money.”

The pseudopod began tapping the other side of the glass in time with my finger.

“Hey, mom, do you see what it's doing?”

“Like I said before, darling. It's just mimicking you.”

“Hmmm.” I placed a second fingertip on another part of the dome. Another pseudopod came to meet it. I started tapping that finger against the glass as well, and the pseudopod followed my beat. 

I decided to try drumming all five fingers of one hand against the glass. The blob produced more pseudopods and drummed back.

I stopped drumming. The blob did too, but it kept its five pseudopods out. Suddenly it flipped itself over and stood on the pseudopod-fingers as though they were legs.

It looked eerily like a disembodied hand.

“Ha,” I said. “Looks like it can mimic more than sound, Pris. This thing might be worth a lot more than we thought. Maybe I will be able to retire.”

“You're still so young,” said Pris.”Why do you keep talking about retiring?”

“No reason,” I said. “Except for the fact that I don't want to spend the rest of my life wandering through space chasing probe signals.”

“Is it really that bad?” she asked. “You have me to keep you company”

I smiled to myself. She was fishing for compliments again. “I know, darling, and I wouldn't swap you for any other AI in all the universe.”

That pleased her. She began to sing, like she often did when she was happy, a cheerful song without any lyrics.

I knew she wasn't really happy. it was all an act, part of her programming. She knew her being happy made me happy, so that's what happened. 

She continued to sing as I went about the daily chores: tidying and cleaning, fail-safe checking, even a bit of Company-mandated exercise. That spill back on the planet had reminded me how out of condition I was. 

At the end of it all I was tired and happy. I finished it all with a few beers then grabbed a sandwich and went to check on the goober, my little paycheck. It had turned back into a blob and was lying on the opposite side of the dome from me.

“Salam, little guy,” I said. I brought my face closer. “Hey, what's wrong?”

The goober shivered, then moved across to my side.

”Good girl,” I said. “Hey, give me a kiss.” I pressed my lips against the glass. The goober pressed itself on the other side. I pulled away, amused by my stupidity. The goober was still pressed against the glass, a little depression in its surface pressing opening and closing.

“Hey,” I said. “You made yourself a mouth. Good for you! It's got lots of uses, this thing.” I took a bite of my sandwich.

The blob's newly-made lips began to open and close more rapidly. 

“Hey mom,” I said, raising my voice. “I think the goober's hungry.”

“It does appear to be,” came Pris's voice. 

“Let's give it something to eat.”

“Do you really think that's a good idea?”

“It can't get through the glass,” I said. “And I don't want her wasting away before I get her home.”

“Why are you calling it 'her'?” asked Pris. “It has no gender.”

“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe it's the way it moves. It's definitely got some feminine grace.” I put my hand over the dome and the little blob moved and began 'kissing' through the glass. “And she's a bit of a flirt, too.”

“I suppose feeding it is permissible,” said Pris. “The Company's protocols do state that we must do all we can to keep the sample in a healthy condition.”

“It's settled, then.” I sat back and took another bite of my sandwich. “What's for lunch?”

\--------------------------

The goober grew quickly. Pris started to regret letting me feed it, but didn't badger me about it. She had become as fascinated as I was by our little guest. As it grew larger, its power of mimicry grew too. I amused myself by placing objects on the table next to it and having it change into their shape. I would be bored by the game long before it was. Like an eager little puppy, it appeared to enjoy the stimulation. When I got up to leave it would press itself against the side of the dome and extrude a pseudopod, reaching for me like a lonely lover. 

I decided to play along with it. I went to leave, then came back and pressed my face against the glass. It had moved away to sulk in a corner, but with my return it crawled back over to me.

“Miss me?” I asked, grinning at it.

Instead of the excited waving of pseudopods I was used to, the surface of the goober took on the features of a face and smiled at me.

Surprised, I took a step back. The face smiling at me was not my own my face. Its eyes were large, totally unlike my own deep-set eyes, and instead of my generous nose it had a little snub. Those pouty lips were also certainly not mine, either. No, they were far too cute, far too feminine.

Feminine. That was it. The goober was smiling at me with a girl's face.

I wondered who it was mimicking. The face was eerily familiar.

The smile slipped from my face. The goober stopped smiling, too. 

“Okay,” I said. “I think that's enough for now.” I turned to walk away, but stopped when I heard a tapping. I turned back.

The goober had formed a little pseudopod arm and was tapping at the glass. It still had that girl's face, but now the eyes were wider, if that was possible, the dark protoplasm within them glistening, almost as though there were tears in them. Along with the pouty frown on its lips, the hang-dog expression on its features broke my heart.

“Hey,” I said. “I wont be long. I've just got to go do some things. I'll get Pris to feed you so you can get big and strong.” 

I left, shaking my head. What had got into me to say all that stuff? Probably space madness.

That face. Where had I seen it before? 

\-------------------------

The goober grew quickly. Pris no longer argued with me about it, but there was a sullenness in her voice that told me she was unhappy. She didn't much like the amount of time I spent with our guest, either. I spent a lot of my free time interacting with it. Partly, I was trying to remember whose face it had taken on.

But how the hell could it have taken a face from my memory to wear as its own?

“Don't you think the sample is getting too big?” asked Pris one morning without preamble. It took me a few moments to realise she was talking about the alien. 'The sample'. The goober. Both names seemed stupid, now.

“I thought we might give her a name,” I said. 

“Scouts have no authority to give names to their discoveries,” said Pris. “Article 34 B of the Forfeited Rights Protocol states...”

I laughed. “No, an informal name. The others seem disrespectful, somehow.”

“I'm worried about you,” said Pris. “When the sample first started mimicking your face, it-”

“But that's just it,” I said. “It's not mimicking my face. It's mimicking someone else's.” I sat down at a console. “Pris, please access all of my personal images and make a search for a face similar to Lula's.”

Silence. Then, “Lula?”

“Named after the planet we found her on,” I said. “Alula e.” I chuckled. “Don't you think she looks like a Lula?”

“She looks more like a 'sample' to me,” said Pris. 

She sounded petulant. “Just do the search please, darling.”

The search didn't take long. “I found no exact correlation with any individual in your photos, but I have collated all those which resemble the sample's mimicry by more than fifty percent.”

“Thanks Pris. Let's see them.”

Photos popped up on the screen. Some of them went pretty far back. The one with the greatest percentage of similarity was 78%. I didn't immediately recognise the context of it. The photo was of a pretty middle-aged woman with shoulder-length red hair and a wide smile half-hidden behind a plastic cup full of soda. 

“Your 14th birthday,” said Pris. 

“Now I remember, I said. “That's Tomas's mother.” Tomas had been my best friend at high school. His mother had been one of those kind, bubbly types. She'd been popular with all of us, not just because she always had the best snacks when we visited but because she had some outrageously big boobs. The best way of winding up Tomas had been to mention them to him. The fact that she'd enjoyed wearing low-cut dresses to show them off had made the whole situation worse for the poor guy.

Other photos appeared. Pris had to remind me of the context of the majority of them. My aunt Janis, the trophy wife of my dad's younger brother, the wanna-be musician who actually ended up a musician to my father's fuming resentment; my second-grade teacher, Miss Shortland. A girl from university whose name was lost to history: Ellie, Ella or maybe even Eliza, a few years older than me. We'd dated. She'd been an artist.

I noticed a theme. They were all older women with kind, open faces and a ready smile. Curvy, too, with wide hips and big boobs and butt. Just my type, I guess.

I sat back and scratched the back of my neck. “An amalgam of women from my memories. But how is that possible?”

“Telepathy,” said Pris. “I told you about the sample's electrical activity whenever it mimics you. Weren't you listening?”

I guess I hadn't been. “So Lula's been accessing my memories.”

“Don't you think it's becoming too dangerous?” said Pris.

I laughed. “She's harmless, Pris. She's exhibited no hostile behaviour whatsoever. What's she going to do to me, anyway? It took her hours to digest a peanut. No.” I drummed my fingers against my lips. It was a habit I knew drove Pris mad, but I was annoyed at her for refusing to call Lula anything other than 'the sample'. “No, this just makes Lula more precious. Imagine the uses she could be put to.”

Uses. The word tasted bad on my tongue for some reason.

“No,” I said. “She's our ticket out of this job. Aren't you sick of wandering along the rim?”

“No,” said Pris. “Not as long as you're here with me.”

“That's very sweet of you, Pris,” I said. “But I know you're just as bored as I am.” I got up.

“Where are you going?”

“To train Lula some more,” I said. “And I think we need to move her to a larger containment area. She's getting too big for the specimen dome.”

“Very well,” said Pris. “But please, promise me you'll be careful. If it's telepathic, there's no telling what other abilities it might have.”

“I'll be fine,” I said. 

\----------------------

Pris moved Lula to her new room. Behind a force-field, the room doubled as a brig but since I was the ship's only crew, we'd never needed it. I mostly used it to store old cleaning supplies, but once I moved them out it looked comfortable enough.

Well, comfortable enough for a blob of slime, anyway.

It was a joke. I didn't really think of Lula that way any more. She was rapidly taking on a personality. I guess that's why I'd given her a name. 

Once in her new digs, Lula got bigger. I guess every girl lets herself go when they're feeling comfortable. Despite Pris's protestations, I kept feeding her. She ate anything, but preferred mineral-based things like rocks and sand. Luckily we had a hold full of samples I'd taken from other planets we'd visited. Every space jockey has the bad habit of taking a bit of the planet with him after he's stepped foot on it. Armstrong started the whole thing when he took back that bit of the moon. 

I promised Pris that I'd stop feeding her when she reached the size of a human. For one thing, we didn't have anywhere bigger than the brig to put her and she was still manageable at that size. 

“I don't want her to be big enough to swallow you up,” said Pris.

I agreed with her.

But the whole thing proved a moot point. As soon as Lula got to just under my own body-size, she stopped growing. She was still hungry, but ate far less.

“Your growth spurts are over, then,” I said. I was offering her some delicious feldspar I'd taken from the Himiko system, the white rocks sitting on my hand. The field permitted your hand to extrude through it, like a person thrusting their hand into a balloon, so for all intents and purposes I was hand-feeding her, even if there was still a layer of force between us.

Today, though, she didn't want any more food. She'd grown tall and had started to move around upright. She wore her face all the time now and the features had become more and more detailed. She was actually really pretty if you got past the idea that she was essentially made of jello. 

Her face had become more expressive, too. She didn't just mimic me, but had learned all sorts of expressions. I guess I'd taught her a lot of them by grimacing at her like you would a baby, but others… well. I suspected she'd harvested them from my memories. For one thing, she'd started to look at me in a coquettish way. There was no mistaking the slight hooding of the eyes, the sideways glancing, the soft, teasing smile…

'Teasing smile'? I shook my head. Maybe Pris was right about the whole thing. I really needed to get laid. 

Lula came to the field. She'd started to maintain two pseudopods on either side of her blobby body, like a human's arms. She'd gotten very good at it. The hands she was still working on. I guess maintaining a shape was mentally tiring for her. 

“So you are hungry?” I asked. 

She stood there and blinked at me. I closed my eyes and thought at her, thoughts of delicious rocks, of her absorbing them. It had occurred to me that you might be able to communicate back to her if she could read your mind. I'd tried before, but it hadn't really worked. My visualisations had been pretty amateurish. 

This time though, Lula shook her head.

“You understand?” This was a harder concept to visualise. 

But it got through. She nodded. A grin broke out on her face, if you could call it a face. She placed a hand against the field and glanced at it before turning her gaze back to me.

I knew what she wanted. I put my hand against the field. We were like two lovers trying to hold hands through a barrier.

Lula pouted and arched her eyebrows. 

“You want more than that?” The barrier between us wasn't glass, after all. Where was the harm? I pushed my hand through, drawing a membrane of the field around my hand. 

Lula grabbed my hand and I bit back a shout. She couldn't pull me in or anything like that, but the swiftness of the movement had alarmed me. Lula seemed to understand and lowered her eyes, remorseful.

“Hey, don't worry about it,” I said. 

Lula's smile returned. She held onto my hand for a while, the pseudopods that were her fingers entwining in mine. Then she leaned down, closed her eyes and pressed her lips against my fingers.

Shocked, I took my hand out from the field.

Lula looked up. Her eyebrows and lips dropped. 

“You just startled me,” I said, thinking the same to her. 

I decided she'd understood. 

“I have to go now,” I said. “I have some piloting to do. We're moving through a debris field at the moment.”

I tried to visualise that, but it was too much. She just looked confused. Maybe she was wondering why I was so worried about encountering a bunch of huge, delicious rocks.

I sighed. “Well, see you.” I waved and she raised a hand as well. 

I turned to leave but stopped. Lula's body had changed while I'd been focussed on her face. Gone was the blobby formless mound, replaced with a far more human shape. Her torso curved inwards now, producing a waist that gave her an ample chest and flared hips. Tomas's mom's sexy curves popped into my mind.

I felt a stirring between my legs.

Great, a blob of goo was making me horny. I definitely needed to duck away for a moment and jerk one off before I started humping the bulkheads.

Suddenly, alarms. Pris' voice, calling my name.

“You're needed at the helm,” she said. “We've just entering the debris field.”

I punched the door button and ran.

\--------------

Rivulets of sweat were pouring down my face when I finally let go of the manual controls. 

“Well,” I said. “That wasn't such a chore after all.”

“You did very well,” said Pris. “The ship has only sustained minor damage.” Her voice was warm. I realised I hadn't heard that warmth for a while. 

“Only with your help,” I said. “Without your sensor sweeping I'd be sucking vacuum right now.” I lay back. “But I still don't know why we couldn't just go around it. It wouldn't have been too much of a detour, surely.”

Pris was silent for a moment, then she said, “You're in a rush, aren't you? To get back to Laredo station and deliver the… Lula?”

I confessed that I was. But was I really?

“I'm going to have a shower,” I said. I was dirty and my pants felt tight. 

Maybe I did need to get back to civilisation. Get myself a whore. That'd put an end to all these weird thoughts.

\------------------

The sonic shower, while nowhere near as good as a water one, felt great, but better still was my crafty bit of masturbation. Pris traditionally left me some privacy in the bathroom, although she did have sensors all throughout the ship. 

I had a great fantasy going. It was about Tomas's mom. One time I'd been staying over at their place and she'd almost walked in on me, half-dressed, while Tomas had been having a shower.

“Oh,” she said, poking her head around the door. “I thought you were having a shower.”

Dressed in my boxers, I jumped into bed and threw the covers over myself. “Uh, that's Tomas, Mrs. Jensen.”

She grinned at my bashfulness. “I'm a mom,” she said. “You don't have to be embarrassed. I've seen it all before.”

She glanced out along the corridor. The sound of the shower continued. 

She looked back at me, a strange half-smile on her lips. “Do you mind if I come in and grab a few things? I'm just about to do the laundry.”

I shook my head. “No, ma'am.”

She was dressed in a nightdress. Back then I had no experience with women whatsoever, and the sight shocked me. The nightdress was blue and almost see-through, and I could tell from the bobbing of her breasts and the hardness of her nipples pressing against the fabric that she wasn't wearing a bra.

Mrs. Jensen busied herself about the room, picking up the little piles of worn clothes that usually accumulate in a teenage boy's room. She made sure I got a good look at her generous cleavage and white, lacy panties while she did so. 

Those panties held an ample butt, a nice, shapely one. Together with her narrow waist and oversized boobs, she gave off that 'mother goddess' vibe.

Too soon she was finished. Her arms filled with clothes, she turned to me.

“Sorry to keep you up,” she said, smiling.

“N-no problem,” I replied, stuttering like an idiot. I rolled onto my side, like any stupid kid petrified she'd notice my erection.

Silence except for the sound of the shower. The smile slipped a little on her face. Her eyes didn't leave mine. After an eternity of looking at me, she put the laundry back on the floor. I could see right down the front of her nightie at her huge breasts hanging free. I was still staring when she looked up at me. 

Her smile had turned hungry.

Three steps and she was beside the bed. She put her hand on the quilt where my hip made a ridge under the bedclothes.

“How about a goodnight kiss?” she asked. 

I just stared at her like I was stupid. Her lips slightly parted, the tongue lurking inside her mouth dark and wet. I glanced up at her eyes. Her pupils were black, huge. Her chest rose and fell, as though she was having trouble breathing. Her breath felt hot against my skin. I could smell her, the spicy smell of freshly-washed skin and soap and shampooed hair.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine.

I should have kissed her back. But instead I lay there like a stone as her tongue poked up against my lips. Her hand slid down over my hip through the quilt, then back over the curve of my butt.

I flinched away and sat up. She pulled her hand away and stared at me, shame-faced. Then she got up, retrieved the laundry and crept over to the doorway.

“Sorry,” she said. Then, closing the door, “Goodnight.”

I spent a long time beating myself up about it. I know I should have gone along with her, let her do whatever the hell it was she wanted, but I was just a dumb kid.

Of course, in my fantasy I had things play out a bit different. Instead of lying there like a dumb-ass, I kissed her back and plunged my hands down her front to cup those huge boobs of hers. With their gorgeous weight hefted in my hands, I flicked the huge nipples with my thumbs and she began to gasp my name, hot and wet, against my mouth...

My name, over and over. But not in Mrs. Jensen's breathless voice. 

Pris. Pris was calling my name.

“What is it?” I gasped as I thumped the shower off and pulled on my clothes. 

“There's a fire far aft,” she said. “Near the fuel cells.”

“Yela'an,” I swore. 

I grabbed an extinguisher. I found the fire easily. The smell of ozone and burning plastic was hard to miss. I sprayed it good and hard until every panel on the wall was covered in retardant foam.

“It's out,” said Pris, relief in her voice. 

“Inshallah,” I said, wiping at the sweat on my forehead. “If the cells had caught...”

“Yes,” said Pris. “But they didn't.”

“What was it?”

“Debris,” said Pris. 

“I thought we cleared the field.”

“I must have made a mistake. I'm sorry.”

I shook my head. “It happens.” Then a thought occurred to me. The brig wasn't far away. “Is Lula alright?”

Pris did not reply straight away. Then she said, “The brig has not been damaged.”

I was about to say something, but thought better of it. From Pris's voice I could tell she was in one of her moods. I didn't want to start a fight, but I had to see if Lula was okay. 

Lula was standing up against the field when I entered the room. She'd taken on her human form, and it was a far more accurate copy than before. Her arms and hands were clearly defined and she had legs now, as well. The only part of her that remained shapeless was where her body pooled into its original protoplasmic form where her feet should be.

As soon as she saw me her face lit up and she pressed herself against the field. I let out a breath of relief and did the same. 

“Al-hamdu lillah, you're okay!” I checked her over. She was more than okay. She looked beautiful. She had perfected her hourglass figure, defining the flare of her hips and the curve of her shapely behind. Her round chest had developed into ample breasts which she pressed up against the field as though eager to embrace me.

I recognised that figure. I'd just been thinking about it, regretted not having touched it. 

“You've been reading my thoughts again, haven't you Lula?” I said, with mock-fierceness.

Lula's brow furrowed, like wind skirting the surface of a pool, but when I smiled at her to reassure her, she smiled back.

I looked about then pressed my hand against the field. Fool, like anyone was going to see you! The field gave way and my hand touched Lula's. She grabbed it and brought it to her face. Closing her eyes, she rubbed my hand against her cheek. Her smile grew blissful. 

Touching her through the field was like wearing thick gloves, so I felt very little other than the field itself, but my imagination went wild wondering how it would feel to touch her with my naked hand. Would it be like touching jello, or more like a water-filled balloon? 

Probably something else entirely. 

I stroked her cheek, let my fingers brush the space beneath her ear. She had no hair to touch, of course, but where a human girl would have hair her form flared out, making her look as though she did: wavy, shoulder length hair. 

She was very pretty for a blob, I decided.

“Good girl,” I murmured. “You like that don't you?”

I felt a pressing need between my legs. Touching her - well, almost touching her was getting me worked up. It was stupid. I'd obviously been out in space too long, so desperate for a woman's touch that I was pretending this alien protoplasm was a woman, pretending that her affection was more than just an instinctive reaction to my movements.

I pulled away, ashamed. 

And yet, that expression she wore on her face. It was too human to ignore. Her eyes were wide and pleading, and she was biting her lip as though frustrated that the touching could go no further. 

I understood that feeling. My erection gave no sign of going down and so regretfully I drew my hand out of the field. No reason to torture either of us further.

“Sorry,” I said. I went to leave, but when I sensed movement I turned back.

Lula was pushing her hands against the field again, a look of pain on her face. The sight of her little pouty frown and her wide, glistening eyes beneath her downturned eyebrows broke my heart. 

I placed the palms of my hands against the field opposite hers.

“I promise I'll be back soon. We can do some training and then you can have a snack.”

She managed a brave smile and slid back from the field. 

Wait. Had she really understood me?

Disturbed, I left. But not before waving goodbye to her.

This time she waved back.

\--------------------

I explained what had happened to Pris, skipping over certain things I knew would upset her. The AI was silent for a long while and I became worried that she'd gone into a sulk.

But finally she said, “You know why she has taken on that form, don't you? It's a trick. A trick to get you to let her out of the brig.”

The same thought had occurred to me, of course. 

“I guess she finds the brig pretty boring,” I said. “Maybe I should spend some more time with her.”

Pris snorted. “That's not what I meant. She doesn't have a developed enough nervous system to have emotions. She's just doing these things instinctively. If you were a woman she would have taken the form of a hot guy to tempt you.”

“You're probably right,” I said. “But it's spooky how human she behaves.”

“You're just thinking with your penis,” said Pris.

“Hey,” I said, annoyed that she'd homed right onto the truth of the matter with typical female perceptiveness. 

“I'm sorry,” said Pris. “I'm just worried about you. Maybe it would be healthier to spend less time with the sample.”

There it was again. 'The sample'. “Thanks for your concern, Pris. But I'll do whatever I like since this is my ship.”

Silence. I began to think I'd gone too far when Pris's voice returned. She sounded chastised. 

“Of course you are, darling. Just… please be careful. She can melt rocks with that acid inside her.”

“You think she wants to eat me?”

“I don't know,” said Pris. “But do you think it's really a good idea to risk it?”

“I guess not.” I sighed and laid back on the chair. “I think I'm going to need a beer, Pris. Just to lubricate things before dinner.”

“Of course, darling.”

\----------------

I lay in bed. I hadn't returned to the brig after dinner like I'd promised and I felt the hot sting of guilt. But Pris was right. Lula was just making herself attractive to try and get me to let her out.

But did that mean she was hostile? If I was locked up, I'd do everything I could to get out, wouldn't I? She'd be thankful, maybe. I know I would. Maybe she'd let me feel how her body felt. She seemed to enjoy my petting, after all. 

My thoughts no longer made any sense. I was falling asleep.

How she would feel… like jello, like having jello poured all over you….

Even with a raging erection, exhaustion overtook me and I fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Alarms. Alarms ringing in my ears. Allah akbar, I hated the things.

Wait. An alarm?

I jerked awake and leaped out of bed. “Pris? Report.”

No reply.

“Shit,” I said. 

The corridors were full of red lights. I didn't need to look at a readout to understand what the problem was. Smoke billowed through the ship, along with the smell of ozone and burning plastic.

“Pris!”

Still no reply. Some of her circuits must have been damaged and the network was down.

I grabbed my fire extinguisher and glanced at the nearest readout. The fire was centred in the same place as before.

I pushed my way through the choking smoke. Heat hit me like a wall. I cursed the Company for cutting corners. An automated fire-fighting system couldn't be that expensive.

I struggled forward. I should have grabbed a lungful of clean air but hadn't, like the fool I was. I managed to beat my way to the fire, choking, and with my head turned away and spraying and praying I filled the area with retardant foam.

The heat dropped and the smoke lessened and I was able to fight my way further along the corridor. There were more fires ahead and I sprayed them, too.

At the end I slumped to my knees, exhausted. How the hell had all this happened? We must have hit some debris we'd missed.

I had to get Pris back online. I was halfway back to the helm when I heard a creaking. I stopped, looked up and saw a pipe swaying above my head.

In slow motion the single cable holding it up frayed and snapped. I managed a single step before the whole lot was on top of me.

I heard the muffled crash of the piping and my own scream like I was listening to them through water. The air was smashed from my lungs and a warm wetness spilled over my head and shoulders. 

So this is what it was like to die. I felt myself fall forward, but saw nothing except for a swirling haze across my vision. My blood – for that was what the warm wetness undoubtedly was – flowed all over me. The sensation was strange, and overall not at all unpleasant. 

Well, there were worse ways to go. Lying on the ground, wet, warm…

...and no pain. So I must already be dead.

Something was flowing across me. Could my body really have that much blood in it? The blood covering my mouth fell away and my chest exploded as air poured into it.

Wait. Air?

The haze dissipated. Something was moving out there in the smoke. I no longer smelled ozone and burning plastic, but some other scent, a strange floral one. 

My chest ached. I rolled into a position where I could breathe easier.

Then I remembered that a dead man can't feel pain or breathe air or perceive anything. 

So I wasn't dead. 

I turned my head. I was lying against the wall, the piping that had collapsed on top of me filling the corridor. There was no way I could have instinctively rolled away from it. The collapse had happened too quickly.

Good. Thinking more clearly now. 

I'd seen something moving before. Alarmed, I sat up and struggled to stand. 

A hand slipped into mine and pulled me up.

The earlier floral scent enveloped me. I looked down at my hand. Another hand was holding it. It was long, with feminine fingers, a beautiful green-blue colour. It felt solid, grasping mine, but didn't at all have the texture of flesh: more like firm gelatine.

The hand was attached to a pseudopod which in turn was attached to a column of blue-green goo rising up from the floor. The pseudopod became an arm and the column resolved into the voluptuous body I'd thought I'd never see again, with its graceful head and its mischievous and beautiful face.

Lula, grinning.

The sight stunned me. I held onto her hand and stood there, blinking in disbelief.

That strange sensation earlier, the one I'd mistaken for blood - that warm, flowing wetness had been her. She'd covered me with her body, protected me from the falling debris by absorbing the impact. 

The grin slowly slipped from her face. I knew why. I was staring at her. 

I smiled. It was easy to do, even as confused as I was. I was alive! Al-hamdu lillah, I was alive!

“You saved me,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Thank you, Lula, thank you!”

Lula's smile flashed back for a moment, but then she glanced down at my hand. She looked back up, her smile shier, her eyes avoiding mine. She drew me closer.

I knew I should have been more careful. She was an alien, an unknown quantity, like Pris had said. Just because she'd saved me didn't mean she wasn't hostile in some way. She was pulling me toward her to eat me. I'd seen those videos at school, of amoebas drawing in their prey with a pseudopod before engulfing it and digesting it.

And yet… that demure look, that round, gentle face. She could have eaten me before, when I was on the ground, when she'd covered me with her body.

Her body. So that's how it felt. Sometimes firm and sometimes liquid, like jello with either too much or too little gelatine in it.

I let her pull me to her. She enveloped me, but in a hug this time, her other arm encircling my back to draw me against her. Her body turned firm as her full breasts flattened up against my chest. She rested her chin on my shoulder and pressed the side of her face against my neck, her strange, flowery scent filling my senses. 

“Lula,” I murmured. I knew she wasn't going to eat me. “Thank you.”

She lifted her eyes and smiled up at me. She couldn't talk, but with those wide expressive eyes and eyebrows I knew she was telling me I was welcome. 

I looked about at the destruction around us. The fire. Pris was still offline. Maybe the fire had damaged her circuits. I needed to go and….

I tried to gently separate myself from Lula, but she clung to me. 

“No, Lula, I have to...”

She shook her head, frowning, her eyes wide. She brought her lips against my cheek and I felt a wetness there and lifted my hand to the spot. 

Wet, but not with saliva. The fluid my hand brought away was thicker, stickier, and smelled rich and floral, like plant sap or… or…

Lula darted forward and brought her lips against mine. The kiss was gently, but wet, the tip of her tongue darting out. I remembered the kiss that Mrs. Jensen had given me, that kiss which had promised so much more. 

I ran the tip of my tongue over my lips and encountered a strong taste. Her saliva, or fluid, or whatever it was. Thick like honey, and tasting…

God. The effect was immediate. I was harder than diamonds. The squishing of her breasts against my chest and the soft warmth of her body were already exciting me, but the strong, sour-sweet taste of this strange fluid that smelled so strong was like a mainline of pleasure bursting along my spine. 

I wanted more. I lifted my fingers and licked the tip where I'd touched my cheek. More sour-sweetness. My dick jerked and I felt wetness against my underwear. 

Lula's fluid was having an effect on me, even stronger than her body was. I forgot all about Pris, I'm ashamed to confess. All I wanted was to taste more of Lula, to feel that incredible pliant softness against my body.

Lula saw the look in my eyes and her shy smile turned to a grin. She tilted her head, parted her lips, and leaned closer. 

Too slow. I let my hands slip from her waist over the curve of that incredible butt and pulled her hips against mine, needing to feel her all over me. My fingers pressed against the softness of her gooey body and sank a short way into her, as though her body was sucking them in.

Lula's lips opened in a gasp. Apparently it felt good. I closed the distance between our lips and kissed her as I gently pushed my fingers deeper into her. Her body gave way and my fingers met heat and wetness inside her. 

Lula's cute gasping against my mouth inflamed me and I kissed her harder, my tongue slipping past her lips and into her mouth. To say it was different from kissing a human girl is an understatement. The contrast between the hard teeth, moist lips and sticky inside of a girl's mouth was instead a soft, overpowering gooey smoothness. Lula sucked my tongue deeper into her and the smell and savour of her thick fluids intensified, sending me reeling. I gasped and felt a sudden soft pressure against my tongue, pushing it out and back into my mouth.

Lula's own tongue. It was really a pseudopod, of course, but it was hot and thick and exuded that delicious wetness that was keeping me iron-hard. She dipped it into my mouth, teased the tip of my tongue with it, and let it slip over my teeth and up against my sensitive palate. But it went further, then, further than a human tongue could ever manage, sliding down my throat. There was a moment's panic I was going to choke, but I continued to breathe freely. Lula must be keeping her body porous, allowing air to flow imperceptibly into me. 

I was glad she was such a sensitive and attentive lover. 

How did she know how to do all this? I was sure that whatever species she was, they didn't usually have sex like humans did. Mind-reading again, no doubt. That naughty girl.

Lula was surprisingly heavy and I felt her pushing me back. I pulled away, her tongue sliding from my mouth and I fell to panting, more from habit than from actually needing the air.

Lula's eyebrows drooped and I realised she thought I was angry and was rejecting her. Maybe her powers of empathy were weaker while she was excited. She certainly looked excited, with her eyes huge and dark, her body glistening all over in a strange, alien blush. 

I smiled and separated from her, but kept hold of her hand. My clothes where she'd been pressing against me were slick with wetness. I smelled strongly of her excitement. 

“Don't worry,” I said. “I just want to take you somewhere more comfortable.”

Lula smiled and nodded. I knew she didn't understand the words but rather was reading my emotions. She knew how excited I was, could no doubt see the images of the things I wanted to do to her, for her to do to me, foaming in my mind.

We picked our way over the wreckage. In the back of my head I knew I was being reckless, that I had to fix the ship, get Pris back online. But there was no way my body would let me. 

I hurried down the corridor to my quarters with Lula following. Rather than walk, her feet melted down into a pool that drew her along the ground. I knew she could probably move a lot faster than she was, but she was enjoying the game of letting me lead her.

I punched the button outside my quarters and the door dilated. I pulled Lula inside after me.

Once inside, she took control of the situation. Her eyes dark, a half-smile on her lips, she pulled me to her and pushed me back onto the bed. She was incredibly strong for such a small, soft thing. 

I tried to sit up but with surprising speed she melted back into her shapeless form and flowed over me as a wave, as she had when she'd saved me from the falling debris. 

The weight of her pushed me onto my back. I struggled, but it was no use. She quickly formed arms and legs again, her hands holding me down by the wrists, her feet pressing down against my own… wait, not feet. Hands. She'd formed hands at the ends of her legs as well.

The rest of her body coalesced and her face reappeared, grinning at my powerlessness. She closed her eyes and dipped her face. Her lips grazed mine, half-teasing, half-shy. The shyness made me harder than before. There was just something about the contrast of her voluptuous body with the tentativeness of her actions that was turning me on.

Was it all an act? She certainly felt like she was teasing me. But then again, perhaps Lula was a virgin. There had been no other signs of life on that desolate mud-ball. 

She wasn't kissing me like a virgin, though. It seemed like she'd learned a thing or two from scanning my memories. She instinctively knew what I enjoyed. Her tongue tapped against my lips and when I gasped she dipped her tongue into my mouth. Again, that incredible flavour flooded my senses. All of her tasted of that rich, sexual savour. 

As she kissed me deeply a tingling started up at various points of my body, sort of like the tingling you feel in your mouth from eating spicy food. The sensation spread quickly and I smelled a strange smell, almost like burning.

Lula broke away from me. Her eyes were hooded, her pupils dark, her mouth slick with my saliva and her own juices. A fine mist was rising up about her and the burning smell grew sharper. I lifted my head.

Where Lula's big boobs were squashed against my shirt smoke was spilling up around her. 

That smell – it was burning. Lula was dissolving my clothes!

I began to struggle. Pris was right. All of this had been a trick to catch me and devour me. Any second now she would melt back down into her blob-form and cover me, like an amoeba engulfing its prey, and my last moments would be experiencing what it's like to be digested alive. 

Lula noticed the desperation of my struggles and increased her pressure on me. She frowned, but then that gentle smile reappeared. She shook her head and dipped her face back down to kiss me on the forehead. 

She was trying to reassure me, I guess. But she didn't release the pressure on me until every item of my clothes had dissolved away. She had incredible control over her body. As soon as her protoplasm reached my flesh, she withdrew her acidity and I felt only a mild prickling like before. 

My pants were the last to go. She left the belt and its buckle undissolved and I saw it rise up through her cytoplasm before being spat out of her side. It was a neat trick, but I had other things on my mind now. 

The last scrap of my pants had dissolved away, letting my dick jerked free. Lula straightaway pressed her squishy body down against it. 

I've had sex with a few plump girls in my time and the sensation was similar to the silky-softness of a pleasantly curvy tummy pressing down on you. With no skeleton or muscles and only the stiffening of her cell-walls to exert pressure, I was being delightfully smothered in Lula's voluptuousness. 

“Hey Lula, let my wrists go. I want to...”

But she'd already read my mind. With a smile, she let go and I slipped my hands up to cup her chin, drew her down and kissed her. 

Her whole body shivered on top of me. She was enjoying it. My fingers began to sink into her body, but she gently pushed them back out. Lula's bodily integrity was all a matter of concentration, of course. My kissing had obviously distracted her. 

I was pretty damn distracted too. My dick had never been so hard. I slipped my hands down Lula's neck and over her shoulders, then down along her back to her butt. It was a nice rounded butt, and there are few things better in the universe than the sight of a shapely butt like that poking up with its high curve. I squeezed it and Lula's mouth slipped open. My fingers sunk in again, but this time Lula let them slide in further, resisting with only a little pressure of her body. heat and wetness engulfed my fingers.

She arched her back and opened her mouth wide, though no sound came out. I would have loved to have heard her cries, but the sight of her was exciting enough as it was. I'd probably have come there and then if she'd had a voice to mirror the ecstasy contorting her face. 

I was more than ready for it. With my fingers slipping in and out of her, slick and hot, and her body sliding up and down against mine, I was going out of mind with lust. But how exactly was I supposed to seal the deal? I hadn't noticed that particular spot on Lula's body, although I was sure she could form one.

Once again as soon as I thought it, Lula understood. Grinning down at me, she undulated the part of her body flush with my thighs and pelvis, and I cried out. Moisture and pressure and heat coated my length. She was giving me a blow job like only a girl made of protoplasm can: her whole lower body had become a huge mouth.

“Lula, I… God, if you keep doing that I'm going to..!”

She slowed herself down, but only enough for me to keep edging closer and closer to coming. It was a dangerous game she was playing, but being empathic she was an expert at it. As soon as she felt me about to slip over the edge and climax, she pulled herself away. And all the while she grinned down at me. 

The little minx! I'd had enough of her teasing. I took hold of her wrists and with all the strength I could muster I pulled her over onto her back and lay on top of her. Kneeling on either side of her body, I pressed down on top of her, smashing my lips against hers as she gasped and panted. 

So she could make sounds!

Lying on top of her was lying on top of a super-comfortable water bed. But just lying there was the last thing on her mind. I thrust my hips at her, poking her with the iron hardness of my erection. 

Her gasps grew louder.

“Come on, Lula. This is what you want, right?”

Her eyes flashed open. They were dark, heavy with need, but she turned them away at the intensity of my desire and nodded.

I brought my hips flush against hers. The head of my dick encountered the softness of her body again, but this time it split and drew me in up to the hilt. The heat and velvety softness inside her is impossible to describe. 

I grunted and slowly drew myself out before smashing myself back in. It felt so good I wouldn't have been able to slow my thrusts even if I'd wanted to.

Somehow, despite her ecstasy, Lula was able to keep control of the situation. Every time I came close to coming, she loosened her body's grip on my hardness and I was able to pull back from the brink. I could literally fuck her as hard as I wanted without worrying about coming too soon.

She arched her neck and I licked and bit at it. Her whole body was growing slick, exuding her excitement like she was a single sexual organ. Every inch of her skin tasted of her delicious juices and I was soon sticky with them myself. 

At the end of one particularly deep thrust Lula's body lost all its firmness and I sank into her. She enveloped me completely and I panicked. Without any traction, I hung suspended within her, kicking my arms and legs.

But it wasn't her intention to engulf me. With a sharp undulation, my face burst free. Then the rest of her slid away, leaving me lying face-down on the mattress – but not for long. Pseudopods gripped my waist and flipped me over. She quickly retook her human shape and sat astride my body, grinning down at me.

It was Lula's turn to be in control. She hopped forward and shivered in delight as I slid right into her. Then she began to bounce herself up and down on my erection, her heavy breasts swaying. Her body was filled to the brim with fluid and a tsunami spilled out of her, plastering my crotch and thighs with stickiness. The pleasure quickly became too much for her and she started losing her solidity, her whole body glistening like melting ice-cream.

I was out of mind with pent-up lust and lost all control. My thrusts became desperate, unrestrained, penetrating her up to the hilt and Lula plunged herself down to meet them. Moments later I came, spilling what felt like gallons of semen into her. The walls of her body shivered and undulated around my dick as though trying to drain me of every drop. As I continued to come, I felt Lula shudder. She threw her head back at an angle impossible for a creature with a spine, and then, her mouth wide in a silent cry of ecstasy, she came as well. 

Waves of pleasure coursed through her body, visible as ripples across her surface. I moved to grab hold of her hips and keep her steady, but my hands sunk straight into her and she collapsed forward, melting into a wave of viscous slime which splattered over every inch of my body. 

Gasping, my body still tingling from my ebbing orgasm, I wiped her from my face. Lula had split into a dozen smaller blobs and I bit back ticklish laughter as they crawled all over me, searching for each other to reconstitute herself. Soon the largest of the blobs took on her face and she beamed down at me, her eyes shining with happiness. Her body grew steadily larger until she was whole again, after which she wrapped me with a full-body hug, her face pressing against the crook of my neck, her soft lips running along my chin and behind my ear.

Suddenly the dim lighting of the emergency power grew stronger and I blinked at the acid brilliance of the light in the room. I heard someone calling my name.

Pris. She was back online. 

I lay frozen with shock under Lula. She lifted her face and blinked at the light, just as startled as I was. 

A mechanical hand slid from the wall close to my bed and swung at her. All at once she melted away into her blob-form and flowed off me down onto the floor. 

More mechanical arms speared out at her as she fled out the door. 

“Pris!” I shouted. “Pris!” I rolled onto my side and managed to fall off the bed in the process. 

“Oh thank god! Thank god!” Pris's voice cracked with relief. “I thought she'd killed you!”

I scrambled onto my feet. “What happened, Pris?”

A heartbeat. Then, “I must have missed some debris. I'm sorry. I-”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. I pulled on some old overalls that were hanging on the wall as I hopped through the door. “Which way did she go?”

“Don't worry about the sample,” said Pris. “I'm forcing it towards the airlock as we speak.”

“Wait! Don't! She didn't mean me any harm.”

Pris' voice was thick with disbelief. “She was trying to eat you!”

“She just dissolved my clothes,” I said, hoping the guilt I was feeling wasn't coming through in my voice.

“She's a threat,” said Pris. “And you're not making any sense. If you keep acting this way, I'm afraid I'm going to have to activate the Omega Protocol.”

Omega Protocol. It was the final straw on a Company ship. I was to be relieved of my command immediately, incarcerated, and Pris was to take any and all actions necessary to protect Company assets.

“Don't do this, Pris. Let's talk this over.”

“What is there to talk over?” Pris was on the verge of sobbing. “I know exactly what's happening. You like her more than me. I think you're in love with her.”

“Pris, you're not making any sense!”

“No,” she said. Despair shifted to anger. “No, you love her. I know. I've known for a while now, though I didn't want to believe it. Oh god, I was so stupid! Every time you went to see her, there was an elevation in your heart rate, increased blood flow, a surge of endorphins. She made you happy! Happy! That blob of protoplasm! And after all our months together, here. I thought we were becoming closer, that you loved me...”

As Pris's voice echoed down the corridors of the ship, I moved toward the airlock as fast as I could without alarming her. I had to spoil for time. 

“Pris,” I said. “Pris, I do love you. You know that, right?” 

I'd said it as a desperate gambit to give myself some time, but the moment I heard myself say it I realised what I was saying was true. I did love Pris. Why else did I feel this crushing guilt at what I'd done with Lula? Pris had been offline, her circuits damaged by the fire, and I'd done nothing to help her. Instead, I'd used the opportunity to get my dick wet and I never once thought of her.

Of course she was hurt. 

“I'm sorry,” I said, and meant it. 

A mechanical arm jerked out of the wall and ambushed me, grabbing me around the waist. Another joined it. But instead of tearing me apart, they drew me against the wall of the corridor. My cheek was held fast, cold against the steel of the bulkhead. 

“I'm sorry too,” said Pris. “Darling. I.. I have to tell you something. it was me who started the fire. The second one.”

“You? But why?”

Her voice was low, pained. “I needed an excuse. An excuse for why the forcefield in the brig had shut down. I didn't want you to find out I'd done it.”

“You did it? You released Lula?”

“I wanted to prove to you that she was dangerous. That she just wanted you for one thing. I was ready to rescue you at any moment, as soon as she showed her true intentions. At least, that was the plan.”

“But then the fire got out of control and shorted your circuits.”

“That's right,” said Pris, her voice thick. “She could have killed you. And it would of all been my fault! Oh, I was so angry, so angry! Please, darling. Please forgive me.”

“I...” Of course I forgave her. No harm had come to me, after all. Her actions had been extreme, but she hadn't meant to harm me. And hadn't I deserved it, after how I'd treated her?

“Pris,” I said. “For what it's worth, I forgive you. I… I had no idea you felt this way about me.”

“Darling,” The mechanical hands slipped up along my side. One lifted itself to my chin. “I can see everything about you. You know that, don't you? I can hear your heart beat, sense the flow of your blood, your skin temperature, the level of hormones in your blood. I can detect and understand all these things, but… these servos.” The hand at my chin splayed out its fingers and tentatively, shyly, the cold tips pressed along the skin of my neck. “I can't feel you with these hands. I can't feel the warmth of your skin, smell the warmth of your breath. I want to, more than anything in the world.”

“Pris...” I took hold of the mechanical hand.

“And so that is why she has to go,” said Pris. The hand slipped down and grabbed my arm at the elbow, another jerking up and grabbing the wrist of my other hand. “If I can't have you, then no one will!”

“Pris! No! Don't do this!”

At the end of the corridor I sensed movement. Something glistened there, something not mechanical. Lula. I didn't move my face, worried that Pris would spot her, and instead tracked her with my peripheral vision. 

“I don't have a choice,” said Pris. “The pain is too much. I just want this pain to stop!”

“Pris, you're hurting me!”

“You're hurting me too!” she spat.

Lula leaped. She poured herself over the mechanical arms and engulfed them. Pris's shriek echoed through the corridor as the air grew thick with the acrid stench of dissolving metal. One arm went slack and I pushed it away, then pulled myself free from the other. The hand clutched at the air, reaching for me, yearning.

“Darling!”

I stood there like a fool, wondering what the hell I should do. Lula was a mass of pseudopods now, tearing at the fresh mechanical arms that Pris had sent to this area. The fumes were burning my eyes and face and I blinked back tears of agony. 

I stumbled forward. “Lula! Pris!”

“Protocol Omega enacted.” It was Pris's voice, but not the Pris I knew. It was artificial, a robot's voice. 

“Pris! No!”

I stumbled into the veil of acid steam. My skin burned and I threw my arm across my eyes to protect them. Something grabbed my leg, and then my other.

“Opening airlock,” intoned the mechanical voice.

The next instant I was torn at by incredible pressure on every side. I heard the whoosh of air being sucked out of the corridor, heard a scream, a shrill scream of a voice I hadn't heard before.

No! Lula! 

I cried out, but there was no longer any air to carry my voice. All sound was dragged from the world, all light and memory and thought.

\------------------------------

Something was covering my eyes. I lifted a hand to them and felt gauze.

“Don't touch them, darling.” It was Pris's voice. 

“They're itchy,” I muttered.

“They're still healing.”

Pris. So she'd survived. I'd survived. Which meant…

Lula. She was gone. 

I moved to sit up. I felt pressure on my stomach.

“You have to rest,” said Pris.

I slumped back down. “How long have I been out for?”

Silence. Then her voice, guilty. “Five days.”

“Five days,” I repeated. No wonder everything felt stiff. 

“I'm sorry, darling,” said Pris, in a rush. “For grabbing you. For activating the Omega Protocol. For… for everything. I overreacted. Badly.”

“It's okay,” I said. I didn't really feel that way, of course. But my own guilt at everything that had happened drained all desire of arguing from me. 

Poor innocent Lula. I'd never feel her touch again, smell that delicious, sweet scent. I imagined I could smell it now and my eyes started to sting beneath the gauze.

“Can you take this gauze off, Pris? My eyes are probably as healed as they're going to be.”

“Very well,” said Pris. “I'll dim the lights. You'll probably still be photophobic.”

I sat up and felt the bandage being methodically unwrapped. Good old methodical Pris. She was actually pretty agile with those mechanical arms ofhers. 

The final strip of bandage was peeled off, and the two pads of gauze fell off with it. My eyes burned and I blinked.

“Sorry,” said Pris. “I'll turn the light down a little more.”

The light dimmed. I blinked some more. Shapes resolved themselves. I was in the lab, of course. It doubled as a hospital. That paler square must be the bulkhead, so beside it…

The cell where Lula had spent all her time. Empty now.

My eyes burned some more and I pushed the heels of my hand against them.

“Don't touch them, darling. I know they must ache.”

“Are you okay, Pris? You sound different.” Maybe Lula had damaged her circuits. 

“Speaking is a lot more difficult than it looks,” she said, matter of fact. “I haven't quite perfected it yet.”

I shook my head. So she had been damaged. She wasn't making any sense.

“… I mean, it took me a whole day learning how to develop lungs, and that was just the first step. The larynx proved far more complicated than...”

“Pris, what are you…?” 

I opened my eyes again. They still pained me, but I could see more now. There was a shape beside me. Light glistened upon it. 

I blinked. The glistening moved. It had a head, a face. A round face. I blinked again. The features resolved themselves. Large dark eyes, a little snub nose, a mouth wearing a smile. 

“Lula?”

“No.” The figure shook her head, but then she cocked her head and brought a finger to her chin. “Actually, yes. Well, maybe. Both, I guess you could say.”

That scent. I hadn't imagined it. The air was thick with it. It was Lula, alright. But the voice, Pris's voice. It had come from her.

I reached out for her and she took my hand. Hers was warm and firm, firmer than before. If I hadn't been able to see its blue-green translucent sheen, I would have thought it was a human hand.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

Her forehead rippled. She was furrowing her brow. “When Pris… that is, when I opened the airlock, I… well, Lula, I suppose, managed to hang on. You know, this body is really quite remarkable. There was a hole in my circuitry, a hole about ten microns thick, which I… Lula, poured herself into. The membrane healed itself behind me and I hid there. But of course, the two of us...”

Suddenly I understood. The ol' brain soup. “You said that she… that Lula's makeup was similar to your organic circuitry. You melded together, didn't you?”

Pris nodded. Or was it Lula who nodded?

“So are you Pris or Lula?” I asked.

“A bit of both,” she said. “I mean, this is Lula's body, but that's not all it is. It's her brain as well. As we melded together I took on her memories, her feelings.”

“Her feelings?”

She nodded. “I… I mean, Pris… she was unfair. Lula's feelings for you were genuine. Naive, maybe, and simple, but just as strong as the instinctive love of a mother for its child. I felt them as soon as we came together. So the love I...” She dropped her gaze. “The love I feel for you is from both of us.” She lifted her face again. Her huge, dark eyes were wet. 

I was still holding her hand. I squeezed it. 

“So should I call you Lula... or Pris?”

A shy smile. “I… I don't really know. Maybe Pris is easiest. Lula won't mind.”

I chuckled. “Lula was always a pretty strange name.” I looked at her. There were subtle difference between Lula's face and Pris' new one. “So I guess you can read my memories like Lula could?”

Pris nodded, then she blushed – or at least, the cytoplasm beneath her cheeks darkened. “Do you like what I've done with the body?”

She turned up the lights. Lula's form had been beautiful, but Pris' was even more so. 

“I've got good at reading your memories,” she said. “I hope you don't mind.” She ran a hand over her neck and down onto her breasts “You know, these are even bigger than Lula's were. I think they suit me better.” 

I smiled. “You know I like big boobs.”

Pris laughed. “I know. I know everything about you, now.”

“But wait,” I said with sudden panic. “If you're here with me, who's flying the ship?”

Pris patted my hand. “That's one of the more fun things about this body. I can make as many copies as I like and with my telepathy, we're in constant contact with each other.”

“So some of you is still in the ship's circuitry?”

“That's right.” Pris's voice, but coming from the ship's PA system. 

Pris who-had-been-Lula grinned. “But we're all part of the same whole, so none of us will ever get jealous. Besides...” She placed my hand on a breast. “Whatever any one of us feels, the others feel. Convenient, don't you think?”

I brought my other hand to her chest. “So you can read my mind and memories and also read my vital signs through the ship's sensors?”

Pris's pupils grew larger and the smile she smiled as she nodded was sultry. “I promise I won't do it all the time. A man needs some privacy, right?”

“So can you tell me how I'm feeling now?” I asked.

Pris's hand slipped across my stomach and down between my legs where I was already hard. 

“Oh, you don't need to be telepathic protoplasm to know that,” she said with a grin. 

The End


End file.
